Underwater sounds.

[fishinwrench]

 

[snagged in outlet 3]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

 

I like that guy.  I watch a lot of his stuff 

[bfishn]

Does anyone find it surprising to learn that boat/electric/electronic noises sound pretty much the same underwater as they do above water (to the human ear)? 

Don't get me wrong, I support anyone's effort to pursue science. Heck, I did the same thing in ~'88 with a surplus navy hydrophone, and learned that, yeah, the above-water sound, less the losses and limits of the equipment used, = what you hear on the headphones*. That was pre-web, and my curiosity demanded action.

Nowadays, it's way easier to look up what others have already learned, before you devote a day to a Youtube video, testing something that's been well known for over 100 years.

I think the better question is what effect does our noise have on fish behavior. That too, has been studied for at least 100 years. The big problem is we have no idea what goes through a fish's brain. Since they don't talk back, we can only observe their physiology and behavior. Historically, it was a shock/reward routine, where one sound delivered a shock, and another delivered food. If repetition elicited a response without the shock/reward, it was assumed the fish could 'hear' the applied sound. Yeah, some folks have even surgically attached monitors to specific nerves in living specimens to observe electrical activity in response to various sounds. There's not many questions we might have that haven't been asked, with only a few answered definitively.

If anyone is interested in this stuff, here's a place to start;

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C4&q=fish+reaction+to+sound&btnG=

ADDED; *Forgot to mention that the audio of large schools of shad is... well... not The Rollings Stones, but it was amazing.

 

[snagged in outlet 3]

55 minutes ago, bfishn said:

Does anyone find it surprising to learn that boat/electric/electronic noises sound pretty much the same underwater as they do above water (to the human ear)? 

Don't get me wrong, I support anyone's effort to pursue science. Heck, I did the same thing in ~'88 with a surplus navy hydrophone, and learned that, yeah, the above-water sound, less the losses and limits of the equipment used, = what you hear on the headphones*. That was pre-web, and my curiosity demanded action.

Nowadays, it's way easier to look up what others have already learned, before you devote a day to a Youtube video, testing something that's been well known for over 100 years.

I think the better question is what effect does our noise have on fish behavior. That too, has been studied for at least 100 years. The big problem is we have no idea what goes through a fish's brain. Since they don't talk back, we can only observe their physiology and behavior. Historically, it was a shock/reward routine, where one sound delivered a shock, and another delivered food. If repetition elicited a response without the shock/reward, it was assumed the fish could 'hear' the applied sound. Yeah, some folks have even surgically attached monitors to specific nerves in living specimens to observe electrical activity in response to various sounds. There's not many questions we might have that haven't been asked, with only a few answered definitively.

If anyone is interested in this stuff, here's a place to start;

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C4&q=fish+reaction+to+sound&btnG=

ADDED; *Forgot to mention that the audio of large schools of shad is... well... not The Rollings Stones, but it was amazing.

 

I was surprised his talking wasn’t picked up underwater by the hydrophone.  Boy, everything else sure was!

[Al Agnew]

1 hour ago, bfishn said:

Does anyone find it surprising to learn that boat/electric/electronic noises sound pretty much the same underwater as they do above water (to the human ear)? 

Don't get me wrong, I support anyone's effort to pursue science. Heck, I did the same thing in ~'88 with a surplus navy hydrophone, and learned that, yeah, the above-water sound, less the losses and limits of the equipment used, = what you hear on the headphones*. That was pre-web, and my curiosity demanded action.

Nowadays, it's way easier to look up what others have already learned, before you devote a day to a Youtube video, testing something that's been well known for over 100 years.

I think the better question is what effect does our noise have on fish behavior. That too, has been studied for at least 100 years. The big problem is we have no idea what goes through a fish's brain. Since they don't talk back, we can only observe their physiology and behavior. Historically, it was a shock/reward routine, where one sound delivered a shock, and another delivered food. If repetition elicited a response without the shock/reward, it was assumed the fish could 'hear' the applied sound. Yeah, some folks have even surgically attached monitors to specific nerves in living specimens to observe electrical activity in response to various sounds. There's not many questions we might have that haven't been asked, with only a few answered definitively.

If anyone is interested in this stuff, here's a place to start;

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C4&q=fish+reaction+to+sound&btnG=

ADDED; *Forgot to mention that the audio of large schools of shad is... well... not The Rollings Stones, but it was amazing.

 

Yup...really the only question that holds real relevance to anglers is how do the fish react to these sounds, as you said.

Look, there is absolutely no doubt that the fish hear your sonar sounds, your trolling motor sounds, any sound you make moving around in your boat, from distances equal to the length of your casts at least.  For stream anglers, they hear the splash of your paddle strokes, and may even feel, with their lateral line, the water displacement from your paddle strokes, as well as any noise you make that is transmitted through your canoe or kayak bottom.  And if you're wading on Ozark streams, they definitely hear the crunch of gravel you do with every step.

And yet we still catch a lot of fish.  So apparently a lot of fish don't associate all these sounds with danger.  Maybe it's proximity...they don't much fear a sound that is coming from a cast length away, but that same sound 10 feet away from them spells danger.  Maybe with some of the mechanical sounds it's just outside their experience and evolutionary history and it makes no impression on them.  

But they CAN learn.  And since there is so much catch and release fishing, a huge percentage of bass have been caught more than once.  Maybe they can learn to associate all kinds of sounds with danger after hearing those sounds and then being snagged with a hook.  Maybe that's just one more layer of handicap when it comes to trying to catch the larger, older fish.

I'm cognizant of the sounds I make. When wading I make a lot of long casts, and if it's a small creek I often stand at the foot of a riffle while wading upstream and make casts starting at the bottom of the pool above and continuing up the pool for as far as I can cast, before wading up the riffle; I'm hoping the riffle noise masks any sound I make.  I almost never get out and wade to fish while floating in a canoe, because I'm sure I'm making less noise in the canoe than I would be wading.  But when it comes to fishing from the jetboat, especially during the winter, seems like my sonar is always on, and I'm on the trolling motor all the time.

Which brings up a slightly different question...the way I've always used the trolling motor is to keep it at a fairly high power and use it intermittently whenever I need to make the boat move.  Some anglers tend to keep the trolling motor on lower speeds and stay on it steadily.  I wonder which, if either, is more noticeable to the fish. 

[bfishn]

9 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

 

...Which brings up a slightly different question...the way I've always used the trolling motor is to keep it at a fairly high power and use it intermittently whenever I need to make the boat move.  Some anglers tend to keep the trolling motor on lower speeds and stay on it steadily.  I wonder which, if either, is more noticeable to the fish. 

One place I tested that was pursuing flatheads caught on juglines. Any TM noise sent them running, even rolling in slowly from 0 with a Pinpoint, which was comparatively really quiet. You could paddle to them or power them down with the outboard, but forget the tm.

[bfishn]

50 minutes ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

I was surprised his talking wasn’t picked up underwater by the hydrophone.  Boy, everything else sure was!

That's partly due to the limitations of his equipment, but mostly to pressure intensity loss at the air/water interface. His voice was first transferred thru air, then water. Everything else started in the water.

[fishinwrench]

Above the water surface I can only hear a ticking transducer if I am less than 6ft. away.    I think it's obvious that his mic results are amplified drastically, but nevertheless we will likely never know how well fish can hear.....or which fish hear better than others. 

An interesting observation that I've confirmed personally is that Carp & Buffalo are more easily spooked with a trolling motor than they are with an outboard.  

[Quillback]

An FFS using buddy of mine has seen the same thing, fished spooked by the TM.  

[Quillback]

8 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Maybe with some of the mechanical sounds it's just outside their experience and evolutionary history and it makes no impression on them.  

I've always thought about that.  And there may be sounds that attract them.  A diver buddy of mine will sit on the bottom and clack a couple of rocks together, he says that smallmouth will swim up to see what's going on.

Seems like I remember a time when the guides on the Bull tailwater would run their outboards circling a pool, maybe throwing a rock or two into the water and it would get the big browns agitated and then they'd bite.

I've always thought we assume that noises that would scare us if we were a fish, will scare the fish, but in my experience they may react differently than we assume.